


Legendary Orator

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4141473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon gives a speech. It's one of Blake's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legendary Orator

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elviaprose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/gifts), [corngold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corngold/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Stuff of Legend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/936026) by [elviaprose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose). 



> A sequel to 'The Stuff of Legend' by Elviaprose, and a prequel to 'Living Legend' by Corngold (which I think has been waiting for a middle section before it could be posted). It's been a long time, but here we go. Plot by the others mentioned, not by me.
> 
> This fic written quite quickly, but hopefully it's still amusing.

The crowd was getting restless. From the side of the stage where he was standing with Vila, Avon could hear an ever increasing rumble of noise. An hour ago it had been excited, expectant - now there was a darkness to it. The people were scared, probably worried that the longer they stayed in one place at what was obviously a revolutionary rally the more likely it was that the Federation would get word of it and arrive to break it up. And they were angry - they must feel as though they'd been lied to by Blake who had promised to attend, just as surely as he would have claimed they'd been lied to by the Federation. Where on Earth _was_ he? 

"How long do you think it's going to be before they start throwing tomatoes?" Vila asked, giving the stage curtains a nervous glance. 

"Not long," Avon said.

"Or worse," Vila said. "Maybe we should get out of here, Avon."

Vila's cowardice was obviously legendary, but he had a point. They were supposedly on the same side as the people on the other side of the curtain - assuming, of course, that none of those people had attended this rally with the intention of assassinating Blake, which was very possible - but, after a few years with Blake, Avon had experience with disappointed, scared and angry crowds. He knew how quickly they could become mobs. 

"Jenna," he hissed into his teleport bracelet. "If you and Blake are not here within-"

"Jenna's busy at the moment," Blake's voice said. Avon couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard blaster fire in the background. That would explain both where Blake and Jenna were, and why Jenna had been so unhelpful last time Avon had called in. "Give us ten minutes."

"You said that ten minutes ago," Vila said over Avon's shoulder. "The people aren't happy, Blake. I'm not happy."

"Then _stall_ them."

"You said that, too," Avon told him. "And we _have_ been." He tried not to react to the sound of Blake's voice harsh with irritation, even though Blake couldn't see him, and even though Vila had other things to worry about than whether Avon got unnaturally aroused at the sound of his leader's voice. Ever since he'd discovered Blake's recruitment speeches on what should have been pornography discs, ever since he'd started _using_ Blake's recruitment speeches as pornography, Avon had been finding it harder and harder to stay angry when Blake got angry. Blake was angry in the recruitment videos. Now, when he did it on the flight deck or on a hostile planet, it felt indecently erotic, like the way he left his shirts open sometimes or had a ridiculously clever idea.

"Then stall them again," Blake said impatiently, with absolutely no regard for what he was doing to Avon's blood-flow. "Ten minutes, Avon. We'll be there. Just hold on." He cut the connection.

Avon and Vila exchanged glances. "It's your turn," Vila said. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Avon said. He had not, thus far, gone out in front of the curtain - Vila and Blake were the showmen on board the Liberator, and consequently it had been Vila who had stepped out in front of the crowd on each of their _eight_ previous stalling attempts. The thought of speaking in front of a crowd didn't exactly daunt Avon, but he just couldn't imagine they would be interested in what he might have to say - particularly not this crowd. "They liked the juggling.”

"They liked it thirty minutes ago," Vila said. "I can't do it again. I'm out of tricks-" Avon gave him a look that implied he knew this was a lie, "and even if I wasn't," Vila continued, "it's Blake they want, not me. I can't do it. I won't do it, so you'll have to do it, Avon. It's your turn."

"If they want Blake, what makes you think they'll be satisfied with _me_?”

"Well - it's a novelty?" Vila suggested, and Avon scowled at him. 

Distantly, he became aware that the crowd behind the curtain had begun shouting Blake's name, demanding he come out: _Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake._ Vila's head twisted towards the sound too, and for a moment they both stood there listening to the chanting. _Blake, Blake, Blake._

Avon twisted back round and grabbed Vila by his lapels. "Vila, try and think of more than just yourself for once. Someone has to go out there, or they'll break down the stage."

"So go out there!" Vila said, almost stumbling over his words in his haste. "I don't like tomatoes, and I don't like being booed or bombed." He pulled himself free of Avon's grasp, and gave him a shove towards the opening between the two curtains. Avon staggered slightly, and then recovered himself. Well, it was a stupid idea - nothing he said or did would entertain these people - but if Vila wasn't willing to go on stage, and Blake wasn't willing to turn up on time, then there was really nothing else to be done. Except call for teleport now and abandon the whole thing, and he thought Blake would probably be exceptionally angry about that. Avon almost shivered at the idea of it - and decided to go out in front of the crowd just to ensure it didn't happen. At some point Blake would notice his reaction to an argument, and ask awkward questions. Avon didn't want to endure the mortification of explaining what he had done (repeatedly) to Blake, and he didn’t want give up the recruitment tapes. He'd tried returning to regular pornovids after a few weeks of Blake, and found they seemed... tame. Flat. Nothing to the way that Blake's nostrils flared. 

_I am a sick man,_ Avon thought wryly, and stepped out onto the stage behind the lectern that Vila had earlier used as a vanishing cabinet. 

He was met by a roar of approval. The crowd was at least three-hundred strong, and everyone seemed delighted to see him. Avon, who had never truly been popular anywhere he’d lived or worked, found himself blinking in surprise. He had no idea what to do. He felt almost dizzy. He held up a hand, and silence fell. In the eery stillness, he heard Vila whisper from behind him: 

“Avon - I think they think you’re _Blake._ ”

 _Surely not,_ Avon thought, and then someone in the crowd shouted,

“We love you Blake!” which seemed rather to prove Vila’s point. 

Now he _really_ had no idea what to do. The obvious thing would be to tell them they’d made a terrible mistake … and that would probably get him lynched, so, though obvious, it was also an obvious mistake. _How,_ Avon thought, could these people think they _loved_ Blake when they had no idea what he looked like, or sounded like, or how he fell asleep sometimes on the flight deck because he’d worked himself to exhaustion? They wouldn’t be able to pick Blake out of a crowd; they certainly hadn’t accidentally purchased his speeches disguised as pornography, which was surprisingly easy to do if they’d put any effort into it at all. 

Actually, now he thought about it, Avon realised that he could have brought one of the discs down with him and played it on a screen for the watching crowds. Too late now, of course, but it was obvious they didn’t really _need_ Blake here, they just needed to hear what he had to say -

From somewhere outside his body, Avon heard his own voice speaking: “My name … is Roj Blake. And I’m going to bring down the Federation.”

It was ridiculous and absurd. He had no idea why he was doing it, but he knew the speech by heart. He’d jerked off to it only the night before, keeping the volume low in case Vila or Cally, who had to pass his cabin on the way to their own, came to bed late and wondered what Blake was doing in his room. He even knew Blake’s cadence, and the way his chin tilted defiantly when he hit certain phrases. He could feel himself copying Blake, copying all of it, as his voice echoed out through the auditorium. 

“What are you _doing_?” Vila hissed, but Avon ignored him. After all, it was fairly obvious. 

“The Federation has taken your freedom,” he told the watching crowd. “Now it’s time to take it back. I woke up from a drugged dream—”

Perhaps the worst thing about the whole experience, Avon thought as he was half way through the speech, was that even though _he_ was the one speaking, even though _Blake_ wasn’t there at all and there was no excuse for it, he could still feel himself getting hard over the mere _memory_ of Blake saying the same things. He was actually getting aroused, in front of three hundred people, by the memory of a _recording_ of Blake. It was utterly ridiculous, pathetic, and Avon could hear his breath going slightly ragged around his Blake impression as he reached the moment that always sent him over the edge.

“Take … a lesson from Lindor,” he told his audience, desperately hoping that the breathiness could be passed off as over investment in the cause of freedom. His favourite red leather trousers felt damagingly tight, but he didn’t actually come in front of everyone, which was a relief. It was also a relief to know Blake was still fighting for his life and hadn’t witnessed any of the speech. “All any of us has to do is speak out,” he finished. “All it takes is one voice in the darkness. Make it be yours.”

A hideous simplification of the struggle for freedom and dismissal of the dangers of rebellion, but Avon was usually in a post-coital state by the time he heard those words. He found himself increasingly believing them – if Blake was proof of anything, he was proof that one man could certainly make a difference. 

Despite his distraction, Avon had managed to deliver the ending of the speech with something like Blake’s natural power. The crowd were applauding and shouting. Nobody seemed to be trying to kill him - they’d found the speech as effective as he had. 

Well, Avon thought, perhaps not _quite_ as effective, but that was almost certainly for the best. 

He waved a hand at the crowd again, keeping the lectern in front of him, then pivoted on his heel and swept back through the curtains. He almost knocked into Blake as he did it, and Blake had to catch him by the elbow to stop him stumbling, pulling Avon back into him. 

“I said _stall_ them, not – go ahead without me,” Blake said, but he was grinning in a disgustingly attractive way rather than scowling in a disgustingly attractive way. He thought it was amusing. 

Avon gaped at him for a moment, his brain trying to work out the earliest point Blake could have possibly arrived and whether Blake had felt his erection in the brief moment that their bodies had collided, while it also tried to work out an appropriate come back. 

“It saved time,” he heard himself saying. “And nobody seemed to notice the difference. Where’s Jenna?”

“Back on the ship,” Blake said. “Vila’s gone back too.” (Avon literally hadn’t noticed.) “Are you ready to come up, or do you want to bask in the glow of your adoring public?” Outside the crowds were still shouting Blake’s name. 

“Do _you_?” Avon said. Blake shook his head, and Avon copied him, feeling a smile tugging the corner of his own mouth. Blake wasn’t interested in wide-spread adulation, any more than Avon was: he was interested in results, and if he had to make himself an icon to do it then he would. But he didn’t particularly like it, any more than Avon had liked being a god for six and a half hours.

Blake raised his teleport bracelet to his mouth. “All right, Cally, bring us up.”

“By the way,” he said, as the two of them entered the empty flight deck a few minutes later, “that speech—”

“A purchase made in error,” Avon said, hoping his voice sounded as casual as Blake’s did. He sat down on the couch, and crossed his legs to hide any lingering evidence of the speech’s effect. “A mistake I won’t make again.” Largely, because (after eight trips to various disreputable vendors around the quadrant) he was now fairly sure he had the complete set, as well as several back-up copies in case of emergency, but Blake didn't need to know that. Really what Avon wanted to do now was return to his room, put one of the discs on, and sink into a guilty orgasmic haze as Blake’s voice washed over him, but he thought that if he didn’t stay here and head off Blake’s questions then it was likely Blake would wait five minutes or so, brooding about it, and then come and knock on his door. What Avon did _not_ want to happen was for Blake to override the lock and walk in on him masturbating to Blake’s revolutionary propaganda. So, they would have to have it out now.

“Hm,” Blake said, taking a seat opposite him. “But you watched it more than once.” Avon made a face to imply this was a ridiculous assumption, while his brain reminded him how much he’d enjoyed watching the speech repeatedly, and Blake said, “You must have done, to have memorised it that exactly. You don’t have an eidetic memory.”

“Ah - well, I wanted to know what the enemy was saying.”

Blake laughed. “Word for word?” 

_Good point,_ Avon thought. Perhaps it had been a bad idea to have this conversation with Blake after all. He wasn’t up to it in this state, keyed up from speaking in public and from Blake’s speech. However he tried to deflect them, the questions would keep coming. Unless he could embarrass Blake as much as Blake seemed to want to embarrass him. _That_ probably wasn’t a good idea, either, but he didn’t have any others. 

“If you really want to know, I put it to the use that had been advertised,” Avon said. 

Blake frowned, as though he couldn’t quite work this out, and then his eyebrows rose in realisation and then came down again into another frown. 

“Hm,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “All right.” He stood up, and paced over to look at one of the consoles. 

“That’s _it_?” Avon demanded. “That’s all you’re going to say to _that_?”

“I assume you don’t want to talk about it.”

“I _don’t_ want to talk about it, but I can’t believe you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind?” Blake said, looking genuinely confused. “You responded strongly and positively to the best part of me—”

“ _That_ isn’t the best part of you,” Avon said before he could stop himself. Revolutionary fervour was the part of Blake he’d like most to excise if it was possible, which of course it wasn’t. 

Blake looked intrigued, and there was a warmth in his eyes and the way he smiled that made Avon’s trousers begin to feel very uncomfortable again. “Really. What is then?”

“The fact that you sometimes leave the room,” Avon said for the sake of his dignity. Blake rolled his eyes, and turned back to the console. One of his hands came up to tug at his lower lip.

“ _And,_ ” Avon said, disgusted with himself, “your sense of humour, your neck, and the way you always manage to think your way out of disasters. I admit, I’m indecisive.” 

Blake laughed: one of the more glorious sounds in the world, and abandoned the pretence of interest in the computer read-out. “Avon, would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Is that an offer, or a question?” Avon said, and Blake grinned and came closer. “Yes,” Avon said in answer to either of them before Blake could change his mind. “Where to?”

“Lindor?” Blake suggested, and then had to wait a very long time before Avon had stopped laughing and gasping for breath before he could kiss him.


End file.
